I pull my coat tight over my face. There’s a buttonhole I can peep through: monsieur le voyeur, le triste sire . . .

In the window, the dim reflection of the compartment door through gliding nightland, with telegraph poles whirring past; black agglomerations of bosky hills under the drama of the romantic German sky; shredding clouds, racing patches of mist; and pale and plump the girl’s white thigh, rising, crooking at the knee, the stocking sliding down, the leg dangling, searching for a foothold, helpless, and behind it, in between, over it, under it, the dark mass of the Negro, his back slowly moving up and down, indolently palpitating, an olive-green torso with a black ass cut off by the white stripe of his lowered underwear, the girl’s hand on the back of his neck, as if they were dancing . . .

Now and then, light flashes overhead: a lineman’s house with a lamp whooshes by, the lanterns of an overpass . . . And the Ukrainian, with dangling head and, no doubt, watery gaze, seeks the moon in the apocalyptic clouds and finishes his song, swallows, begins a new one, even more mournful, more nostalgic. The road is long, the vowels draw the wanderer’s weary feet from the ooze of mashed consonants: vshot-chokhoy kakda tsmyelyshnuyaaaa wayakhoy shtshaluuuy vsho-shoooo . . .

The air in the compartment thickens, I sweat in my corner, powerless, grim, monsieur le vivisecteur . . . In his buttonhole, the dandy wears the orchid of a white female thigh with a Negro back wedged in . . .

1946, Nuremberg.

A treatment to harden the soul. Pastor Kneipp’s method. A ruthless alternating cure of impressions. Boiling baths and icy showers.

I take part (in a mess-alliance, so to speak) in the glory of the victors, accusers, and judges. I am distinguished, I belong to the supermen. I eat with the Allies in the cafeteria of the Fürth courthouse. In the lascivious lard of shimmering canteen grub, six courses, splotched on a punched aluminum tray. In line. Queuing up with prison guards, tabloid reporters, file rummagers, gonorrheal secretaries—your turn, buddy. The ladle shits: brown cutlets—move along—puke of piercing green canned peas—move along—a pile of pus-yellow corn—move along—lymph of mashed potatoes—move along—a canned pineapple slice, canned condensed milk, coffee, Coca-Cola, a chocolate bar—move along—cookies, white bread, canned grapefruit juice, canned beer, cigarettes galore. . .

Outside, the people are starving, selling their little sister or their dead son’s Knight’s Cross for a carton of Lucky Strikes. In here, we are showered with music from the loudspeaker can: “Blue moon, you saw me standing alone—without a dream in my heart—without a love of my own . . .”